In the last issue of this newsletter, before all four of the analysts here at RSR headed off to the biggest annual event in our industry – the National Retail Federation’s Big Show – I mused about which version of the show we might be in for in 2016. Would it be the first kind, where vendors showcase dazzling technologies of the future designed to capture the imagination? Or would it be the second: a series of demonstrations more squarely rooted in helping retailers perfect the core tenets of retail – a back-to-basics focus?

And even though we’re still all absorbing everything we saw and learned, I’m calling this year’s show a bread and butter affair. Which, truth be told, I think all four of us were hoping for.

Yes, there were a smattering of whiz-bang demonstrations featuring technologies, in many cases, that had just arrived from the previous week’s CES show in Las Vegas. A robot to replace your local car salesman, for example. RFID applications that claimed to work in a retailer’s operations (sometimes within environments rife with metal and liquid), despite a prerequisite suspension of disbelief. A handful of omni-channel solutions that handily skipped over the part describing just how information gained about a customer’s online behavior would be made available to store associates once that customer walked through the store doors.

But for the most part, the show floor was firmly planted in pragmatic creations designed to help retailers plan, measure and execute better. And more importantly – just a little bit better than they already are. And in most people’s minds, incremental change = realistic opportunity.

What I did not, like, however, was the amount of self-service technologies being featured across the show floor. We’ll be sharing the specifics of these examples (and many, many, many more) in a webinar we’ll be hosting one week from today. The event has become a tradition for us, where we attempt to encapsulate everything 4 analysts saw across 4 days of back-to-back meetings. It’s ambitious, of course, but we hope that if you’re able to join us, we’ll be able to provide some real insight into our take on this, the granddaddy event of them all, and what it says/means for our industry at large.

So join us if you can! In the meantime, both Paula and Brian share just a little bit of what they saw at the show in this week’s remaining Retail Paradox Weekly articles. We hope you can join us next Tuesday afternoon.